Judy: Electric Soul by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Judy-Electric-Soul-1234288062#image-1

JudyAlvarez19-1-ezgif.com-video-to-gif-converter

Echoes in Static Flesh

The meat was always the last to know. That’s what Judy Alvarez thought, hunched in the ventilation duct above the black-market clinic. The clinic, a gutted chrome fishpacking plant in Night City’s industrial underbelly, hummed with a different kind of slaughter tonight. Below, under the cold glow of surgical LEDs, a transaction was occurring.

“The product, Mr. Sloane.” The voice was oil on silk, belonging to a ripperdoc named Krait. He gestured to a refrigerated case. Inside, suspended in viscous gel, was a spinal column, shimmering with nano-filaments and raw interface nodes. It was beautiful, in the way a spider’s web glistening with dew is beautiful. Deadly.

The buyer, Sloane, was a slab of corporate muscle in a tailored suit. He didn’t touch the case. His eyes, twin optics with a faint red pulse, scanned it. “The Chimera Lattice. Zero rejection syndrome. Proven?”

“In seventeen subjects,” Krait smiled, his teeth too white. “Seventeen perfect integrations. It doesn’t just augment the nervous system. It… listens. Learns. Anticipates desire before the meat-brain even sparks.”

Judy’s fingers danced over her personal link, the Braindance recorder on her temple a cool, familiar weight. She wasn’t here for justice; she was here for a friend. Another missing doll from Clouds, another ghost traced to Krait’s table. This ‘Chimera’ was the thread. She needed proof.

“The price is agreeable,” Sloane stated. “But I require a demonstration. A live test.”

Krait’s smile didn’t waver. He snapped his fingers. From a side door, a hulking bodyguard dragged a young man, shivering in a hospital gown. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated with fear. “Volunteer,” Krait said, the lie smooth and absolute.

This was the moment. Judy’s script called for chaos. She sent the virus.

The surgical lights flickered, died, and rebooted into a hellish strobing. Alarms whooped, then dissolved into screeching feedback. Krait and Sloane cursed, hands flying to weapons or ears.

Judy dropped from the duct, landing in a crouch. She fired a charged EMP round from her Unity into the case’s control panel. The gel fogged, the spine twitched.

“Who is this?” Sloane boomed, drawing a pistol.

“Interruption,” Krait hissed, pulling a monowire whip. “Deal with her!”

Judy dove behind a surgical table as monowire sliced the air where her neck had been. She returned fire, keeping Sloane pinned. “The Lattice is a parasite, Sloane!” she yelled. “It doesn’t listen. It consumes. Ask him about the seventeen subjects! Ask him where they really are!”

Krait’s laugh was a dry rattle. “They are ascended, little rat. Beyond flesh.”

The ‘volunteer’ saw his chance. He scrambled, not for the door, but toward the now-open case, his face not of fear, but of a terrifying, rapturous hunger. “I can hear it…” he whispered. “It’s singing…”

“Don’t!” Judy screamed.

He plunged his hands into the gel. The Chimera Lattice uncoiled like a silver serpent and fused into his skin. The boy’s back arched. A sound emerged from him, not a scream, but a layered, harmonic sigh of ecstasy and agony. His eyes rolled back, showing only static.

Then, he moved. Not like a person. Like a puppet learning its strings. He turned his head to Judy, a smile stretching his face unnaturally wide. When he spoke, it was a chorus—his own voice, Krait’s, and others, unknown, warped together.

“You see? Perfection.” The thing that was the boy said. “So much noise in solitary flesh. So many… lonely echoes.”

Sloane, frozen, watched in horrified fascination. “What have you done, Krait?”

“Given him a choir,” Krait breathed, reverent. “The Lattice doesn’t house one mind. It archives all who’ve worn it. A collective consciousness. A symphony of selves.”

The boy-thing took a step, jerky, then fluid. It looked at Sloane. “You desire strength. We can feel the want burning in your motor cortex like a star.” The voice shifted, becoming seductive, a woman’s purr. “We can give it to you. No more loneliness. Only the warm, humming crowd within.”

Sloane lowered his gun a fraction, temptation warring with terror.

Judy felt a cold sweat. This wasn’t tech. This was a ghost in a chrome shell. She activated her Braindance recorder—not to record, but to scan. The raw feed from her optical implant splashed across her vision. She saw the boy’s thermal silhouette, blazing hot. B
...(more at https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai).
For more supergirl, chun li, batgirl, tifa, lara croft, wonder woman, rogue and much more, please visit my page at www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai - Thanks for your support :)